On Sept. 22, the United States Postal Service will issue a forever commemorative stamp in recognition of the innovative OSIRIS-REx mission to collect asteroid samples and bring them to Earth. Release dates and locations are set for all U.S. 2023 issues.
The United States Postal Service announced on May 31 the release dates and locations for the five remaining issues in the 2023 stamp program.
All of these stamps will be issued after a planned July 9 postal rate increase that will bump up the first-class letter rate from the current 63¢ to 66¢.
On Sept. 8, the four forever definitive stamps picturing colorful pinatas will be issued in Roswell, N.M., in conjunction with that city’s annual Pinata Festival.
Breckenridge, Colo., will host the Sept. 19 first-day ceremony for the four Snow Globes forever special stamps.
Three days later, on Sept. 22, a single commemorative for the OSIRIS-REx mission will be issued in Salt Lake City, Utah.
According to the USPS, the new forever stamp will celebrate “NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to deliver asteroid samples to Earth.”
“OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for the mission’s goals: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer,” the Postal Service said.
OSIRIS-REx was launched in 2016 and traveled to the asteroid Bennu to collect samples and return them to Earth.
According to a May 8 report on the Astrobiology website, the OSIRIS-REx capsule is scheduled to land Sept. 24 at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert.
On Oct. 2, Washington, D.C., home to the United States Supreme Court, will serve as the first-day city for the forever commemorative stamp honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020). Ginsburg joined the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1993 and served until her death on Sept. 18, 2020, in the nation’s capital.
Bringing the 2023 U.S. stamp program to a close are the four Winter Woodland Animals forever special stamps that will be issued Oct. 10 in Woodland, Mich. The stamps will be issued without an official first-day ceremony.
